Intel has officially launched their latest, Skylake based Xeon E3-1200 V5 ‘Greenlow’ family of processors which will power single socket platforms in the workstation and server markets. The Skylake Xeon E3-1200 V5 lineup which has launched today consists of 11 Xeon processors while three more are going to make their way to the market in 2016, featuring faster graphics processors and embedded DRAM.

Intel Skylake Xeon Processors Now Available on LGA 1151 Socket – Work Only With C230 Series Chipsets

With Skylake, Intel is transitioning from their Denlow Platform to the new Greenlow Platform which is based around the C230 Series chipset. The new platform offers key performance improvements while delivering better graphics capabilities and provides more features. The Xeon E3-1200 V5 processors can support up to 64 GB of DDR4 system ram compared to just 32 GB DDR3/L memory on the older Xeon E3-1200 V4 processors. The chips offer 20 Gen3 PCI-e lanes compared to just 8 Gen2 PCI-e lanes, total of 10 USB / 14 USB 2.0 ports compared to 6 USB 3.0 / 8 USB 2.0 ports and 8 SATA (6 GB/s) ports compared to just 6 SATA (6 GB/s) ports.

The 1S Greenlow Platform features three key Xeon product stacks, one of the stack will consist of chips that don’t feature any internal graphics core, one stack consists of chips with Intel iGPU graphics and a last stack with chips featuring Premium graphics such as Iris and Iris Pro with eDRAM. There’s Skylake Xeon 4+4e (Quad Core + GT4e), Skylake Xeon 4+2 (Quad Core +GT2) and Skylake Xeon 4+0 (GT0 *No Graphics). There are a total of five Xeon chips without graphics, three chips with regular GT2 graphics core, three low power chips and three data center graphics chips. All of the chips except the data center graphics SKUs are featured on the LGA socket while the data center graphics chips are BGA only.

Now Intel has made a slight change when it comes to compatibility of Xeon chips with consumer grade boards. Previously, Intel had allowed compatibility of Xeon processors on Z/H/Q series motherboards but they are now changing the support and excluding the 100-series chipsets from support of their new Xeon processors. Intel has their own slides showing that the Skylake Xeon chips will be compatible only with C232 and C236 boards while the BGA processors will be compatible with the C236 chipset based motherboards. It has been reported by Computerbase that most of the motherboard manufacturer’s stated that Intel has not yet communicated publicly with them if they mean to deliver a new BIOS that allows Xeon processor support but for now, Intel has made it very official that they are keeping support limited to the workstation focused, C230 series chipsets. If any one does try fit a Xeon chip inside their Z170 motherboard, then the processor will determine an invalid combination and the platform will simply not boot.

Let’s start off with the GT0 based parts that start with the Xeon E3-1280 V5 that’s a multi-threaded quad core chip clocked at 3.7 GHz base, 4.0 GHz boost and features 8 MB of L3 cache with a test TDP of 80W. The other chips include the Xeon E3-1270 V5 with a multi-threaded quad core design clocked at 3.6 GHz base and 4.0 GHz boost, Xeon E3-1240 V5 with a multi-threaded quad core design clocked at 3.5 GHz base and 3.9 GHz boost, Xeon E3-1230 V5 with a multi-threaded quad core design clocked at 3.4 GHz base and 3.8 GHz boost and lastly, the Xeon E3-1220 V5 which is a normal quad core variant without multithreading support clocked at 3.0 GHz base and 3.5 GHz boost. All chips have a test TDP of 80W and don’t feature any graphics core integrated on the die. The flagship Xeon E3-1280 V5 will cost $612 US while the entry level Xeon E3-1220 V5 will cost $193 US.

The second list of SKUs are the ones based on the GT2 graphics core and these consist of the Xeon E3-1275 V5 that is a multi-threaded quad core clocked at 3.6 GHz base, 4.0 GHz boost, featuring 8 MB of L3 cache and 80W test TDP. The parts that follow include the Xeon E3-1245 V5 which is a same design with lower clock speeds of 3.5 GHz base and 3.9 GHz boost while the Xeon E3-1225 V5 is a simple quad core design without multi-threading support and a 80W test TDP. The low power stack also comes with three chips that include Xeon E3-1260L V5, a multi-threaded quad core clocked at 2.9 GHz base, 3.9 GHz boost clocks and a 45W TDp while the other chip that is similar in design is the Xeon E3-1240L V5 that is clocked at 2.1 GHz base and 3.2 GHz boost but comes with a low TDP of just 25W. Both of these parts don’t come with any iGPU. The third chip is a quad core without multi-threading support and is known as the Xeon E3-1235L V5 that is clocked at 2.0 GHz base, 3.0 GHz boost, a 25W TDP and a GT2 graphics chip.

Finally, we have the BGA parts that consist of the Xeon E3-1585 V5, a multi-threaded quad core with Iris Pro graphics and 64 MB eDRAM cache. The Xeon E3-1585L V5 is a similar design but has a lower TDP of 45W while the quad core (No Multi-threading) Xeon E3-1565L V5 features the Iris Pro graphics with a TDP of 35W. Clock speeds of these chips have not yet been determined. Just in case you were wondering, Intel has also launched Skylake Xeon processors for their mobility platforms weeks ago. The BGA processors will hit the market later in 2016 while the rest of the lineup is now available for grabs along with new C232 and C236 chipset boards.